


Teethed on a crucifix and cradled underwater

by lotesse



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Episode Tag, Fairies, Feminist Themes, Gen, Minor Canonical Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-22
Updated: 2010-11-22
Packaged: 2017-10-13 08:19:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/135139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotesse/pseuds/lotesse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Elena's strange wonderful independence can't really be gone for good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Teethed on a crucifix and cradled underwater

*

Elena was tired of wearing her good shoes. It'd been fun, for a while – walking in them like any proper lady without ever falling on her face, feeling pretty and dainty and elegant. But elegant or not, they pinched like elftouches. Once her father and all the rest of the court had gone indoors, and she was left alone in the stable with only her quiet-eyed free-spirited palfrey, she surreptitiously toed them off. She went in just her stockings as she saw to stabling her horse, and then left them along with the pretty shoes to lie with the saddle tack. Arching her bare feet in pleasure against the cool stone, she hitched up her skirts in her fists and took off running as fast as she could.

*

Elena knew that she was dreaming: “come find me,” a voice whispered through her sleep, “and it won't hurt this time.” She was in the wood, walking six inches off the ground through a glade that she recognized easily as one an hour's ride from her father's keep. She didn't fall, and she couldn't fly but still her feet refused to touch the springy damp greensmelling moss. She'd ridden there often before, when the various pressures that filled her grew too intense. Waking with a gasp, she had to blink a dazzle of blue out of her opening eyes before they could adjust to the dark and show her that she was alone, and that her window was hanging open. It swung in the breeze, lead and glass chiming rhythmically against the stone of the sill.

*

Elena hadn't realized just how many potions and tonics it'd taken to get her hair so tidy and smoothed down for her not-wedding until she had to unpack them all. Grunhilde hadn't come back with them – and Elena was partly sorry that she'd lost her only real companion, and partly not at all unhappy that she'd been freed of her nurse's rather overbearing care – which meant that Elena had to care for her own things, and neaten up the disturbance her journey to Camelot had made in her rooms.

When she'd done, an array of them clustered in front of her mother's old silver mirror: cut glass bottles and painted tins and pots filled with emollients and purses containing divers powders and metal pins and ivory combs and worn flowered rags for binding up curls and a skin filled with a special soap to wash with. She looked down at them for a long moment, and then, coming to her decision, she shook her head, causing several ornaments to come loose from her hair and fall tinkling to the floor. She didn't really care so much that her hair looked more like dandelion fluff than it did like spun gold – she wasn't going to use all that every day. But it was nice to know that she could, every once and a while. If she wanted to.

*

Elena was riding, her mind empty of everything save the sensations of the wind against her face and the galloping shifting power of her horse. When everything suddenly went still, and her heartbeat began pounding loud and slow in her ears – when she saw the luminous girl-body hanging before her like a jewel in the stilled air, she wasn't afraid. She slid down from her palfrey's back, and she couldn't feel the ground beneath her feet. She reached out a dreamy hand to touch the little fairy thing, and as soon as her fingers felt the brush of its fluttering wings her heart leaped in recognition, as if she'd found a dear and long-lost friend. “You belong with me,” she told the tiny creature, and in return the fairy smiled at her, displaying gleaming little teeth like the smallest of pearls.

When the fairy lit down on Elena's finger, she saw that its bare feet were long-toed and strange. And when she curled up in the cup of Elena's hand, she noticed that the fairy girl had wild hair just like hers, and that its wings were filmy-fine. And when the fairy girl reached up to touch her minute hand against Elena's lips, the taste of it was one that Elena already knew.

*

Elena didn't mind the idea of being Queen, so long as she didn't have to get married first. It wasn't as if she'd ever be lonely. All she had to do was open her mouth and swallow down the quivering little fairy-light, and she'd have her friend's voice speaking into her ear, hearing all her thoughts, sending flutters of pleasure and love and interest to brush up against her mind. And it wasn't as if she didn't enjoy a bit of solitude every now and then. Now that she could choose, she often as not didn't let that light into her body, preferring the privacy of her own thoughts.

If she was Queen, she'd probably have to wear nice shoes a great deal of the time, and she wasn't entirely happy about that. But, she reflected, when she became Queen she could also declare it the fashion for ladies to tie up all their hair under pretty caps – or set a fashion for wearing it wild! And although she wouldn't be able to ride out whenever she wished, she'd have the best stables in the world, with the most spirited horses, and she'd let the fairies tie as many knots as they liked in the manes and tails so that her horses would be as wild as she was.

Someday, she would be Queen. And when that day came, she knew she was going to have a great deal of fun.


End file.
